Asghar Farhadi Quotes

Moslem fundamentalist leaders are not mistaken in seeing in Western civilization the greatest challenge to the way of life that they wish to retain or restore for their people

Modernization means Westernization.

The dogma of cultural relativism is challenged by the very people for whose moral benefit the anthropologists established it in the first place. The complaint the underdeveloped countries advance is not that they are being westernized, but that the westernization is proceeding too slowly.

American is deteriorating because it is becoming like other countries

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

For members of a traditional society where many traditions have been discredited, an interest in modernity can result in a restless sophistication. Mehmet Ertegun seems not to have been a restless man.

Finally, I have to say that the most surprising aspect has been the speed at which the folks in India adapt to Western practices. They learn fast, really, really fast.

Our brother (many of the Jews of the Middle East) has gone to Europe and to the West [and] come back a Russified Jew, a Polish Jew, a German Jew, an English Jew. He has come back with a totally different conception of things. Western and not Eastern…, coming back with imperialistic ideas, with reactionary or revolutionary ideas… he is not the old cousin, and we do not extend to him a very good welcome

The culture of Saudi Arabia belongs to a past age. It is not appropriate for the age of globalization.

Islam and its tradition have until now encountered modernity as a cultural aggression (al-ghazw al-fikri), not as a historical phenomenon.

There's a reason why the cultures of so many Chinatowns around the world in some ways are more Chinese. They've held onto older Chinese rituals, traditions, and symbols in ways that, if you go back to China today, they're not holding on to. They're getting married in white dresses and in churches.

Niaqornat particularly seemed to offer a heightened version of a story being played out across the world about traditional communities' struggle for survival and their attempts to renegotiate their identity in the face of modern life.

I always thought that in the countries that the modernity kicks in later, it seems that everything changes on the surface, the physical things change, but inside, things haven't changed, really. This is always the challenge of this kind of community, to make a harmony between the cultural traditions and the modernity of modern life.

The people of Iran have been battling against consecutive conflicts between tradition and modernity for over 100 years... some have tried and are trying to see the world through the eyes of their predecessors and to deal with the problems and difficulties of the existing world by virtue of the values of the ancients... many others...seek to go forth in step with world developments and not lag behind the caravan of civilization, development and progress.

We are American at puberty. We die French.

At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.

Mexicans who come to America today end up opposing assimilation. They say they are "holding on to their culture." To them, I say, "If you really wanted to hold on to your culture, you would be in favor of assimilation. You would be fearless about swallowing English and about becoming Americanized. You would be much more positive about the future, and much less afraid. That's what it means to be Mexican.

I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [his grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

One of the defining characteristics or difference between today's illegal immigration and the immigration of old is the immigrants of the late 1800s through the early 1920s came here desiring to become Americans. They wanted to become part of what was a unique and distinct American culture. They were all coming from tyranny of one kind or another.

The Jews had a love-hate relationship with the Greek culture. They craved its civilization but resented its dominance. Josephus says they regarded Greeks as feckless, promiscuous, modernizing lightweights, yet many Jerusalemites were already living the fashionable lifestyle using Greek and Jewish names to show they could be both. Jewish conservatives disagreed; for them, the Greeks were simply idolaters.

Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

I think globalization actually maintains and fosters various elements of national and cultural identities. I don't think everything is being homogenized. If anything, your food, your culture, and your ethnicity might become part of the globalized world, and thus absorbed by other countries.

I have inherited a belief in community, the promise that a gathering of the spirit can both create and change culture. In the desert, change is nurtured even in stone by wind, by water, through time.

If the immigrant is responsible for assimilation of the country, and some of these people are in fact are born there. But if you find it unwelcoming to your own barbaric notions of equality, that is not on the country, that is on you. If you leave a horrible place, please leave your horrible practices behind.